I’m fascinated by the interview with famed astrologer Robert Hand in the current issue of The Mountain Astrologer. What particularly interests me is Hand’s description of astrology not as a religion or a science but as a language — and, in modern times, a fuzzy one at that:

“We have to stop thinking of astrology as being like a scientific technology in which there is one and only one way of doing things. Instead, we must think of it as being a linguistic system, a language. The difference between a good and a bad language is not whether the language is English, German, Spanish, Chinese, or Hindu. These are all good languages. The difference in usefulness of one language over another stems from whether a language can say something. Insofar as a language cannot say something, it is deficient.

“The language of modern or 20th-century astrology is so impoverished that it cannot say things clearly. It is fuzzy, unfocused and simplistic. … In modern astrology, as it is done by many people, one cannot even tell if it is working or not. It might say something, but not clearly. In medieval astrology, you can be precise.” (Robert Hand quoted in The Mountain Astrologer, Aug/Sept 2008, p. 44)

I pondered this assertion as I walked through the crisp, clear air of the Los Angeles foothills this morning. Though I know little about medieval astrology, instinctively I agreed with Hand, perhaps because my training in Huber astrology emphasizes the basics — only the 10 planets, only aspects that are multiples of 30 degrees, a holistic view of the chart — in a drive toward clarity and usefulness.

Even ten years ago, as I was testing the waters of astrology, just barely dipping my toes in, I was being told by Huber tutors and texts that modern astrology had become so burdened with “extras” that the basics had been obscured. We had, they said, to get back to an astrology that emphasized the core.

But this morning in the still-cool mountains, my feet rhythming down against hard concrete, my mind pressed beyond that statement that I’d so taken for granted from the get-go. I wondered, then, why modern astrology had moved toward collecting and hoarding and valuing so much extra, so much that went beyond the simple clarity of other approaches. I wished for a horoscope chart for astrology itself, that I might take a peek at its second house, or the placement of its Venus, or how many trines criss-crossed its concentric circles. What transits or progressions had brought us to this place where prominent and pioneering astrologers weren’t diving into shiny new intricacies but instead saying, “Enough!“?

I wondered if the alleged obfuscation of astrological language has to do with the long haul of socioeconomic shifts, with the way western culture has moved from a feudal system to one where free choice is more central. In feudalism, we already knew a lot about the child before he was even born: his degree of wealth (or lack thereof), his career path, his religious practice. A lot more of the life path was determined by the collective than the individual. There was a lot more lower-hemisphere living, a lot less upper. It was the nature of life. Perhaps the language of medieval astrology grew up around that worldview.

“Practically speaking, … choices are very articularly decribed in medieval methods. It doesn’t just present foggy masses of possibilities. You can say this or that strategy should work very well, while this or that strategy probably won’t. But you never say that this will work and that will not. Modern astrology will say, ‘We-e-ell, let’s see…’” (Robert Hand quoted in The Mountain Astrologer, Aug/Sept 2008, p. 44)

Now, though, there is nothing tangible that keeps a millworker’s son from grow up to marry a princess — or even a prince, in some jurisdictions! The choices available to each individual are, even quantitatively, so much more than in centuries past that to look at a horoscope chart in modern times is, at first, to entertain every single possibility in the world. The scope of choice is so much greater now than ever before in human history, so the astrologer’s challenge, too, is perhaps greater. And the language of modern astrology grew up around that worldview: We try to accommodate all possibility, now. Perhaps our language is less clear because our world is less clear.

This broad stroke of theory is not meant to excuse the alleged fuzziness of modern astrological language, or to let modern astrologers off the hook. It is obviously important for people who come for a reading to leave with the understanding that the astrologer has not just promised, eyes dewey and bright, that “You can be anything you want to be!” There is grave responsibility in articulating the viable paths of an Other. To do it well in a wide-open world is a task of penetrating depth and seriousness of commitment.

This statement brings me to another linguistic question that’s been marbling around my thoughts on my morning walks in the mountains: the astrological difference between a symbol and a sign.

The word “sign” comes from the Indo-European root “sekw-” — “to point out” — whereas “symbol” comes from the combination of the Greek “syn-,” meaning “together” and “ballein,” which means “to throw” — that is, “to throw together.” Following on these roots, in the modern vernacular, “symbol” is associated with the richness of metaphor, whereas “sign” is understood as simpler, more direct.

For example, if a red, eight-sided placard posted at an intersection reads, “STOP,” and we understand that the rules of the road are inflexible, it is easy to know what to do. We press on the brakes, because the placard is a sign. It is one thing, an object, that points to another thing, an action. But if we’ve grown up believing that we have a choice about everything in life, then we might instead see the placard as a symbol — a metaphor for something else in life, a suggestion that it might not be a bad idea to slow down a bit, perhaps, in school or thought process or daily life … and by then we’ve run over a squirrel, or worse.

So, in a similar vein, when we look at a horoscope chart, do we see Jupiter as a sign of material wealth, or as a symbol of all possible paths related to growth and expansion? If the latter, how do we communicate that in a meaningful way to the client? Or is it, instead, possibly something in-between sign and symbol? Or more a symbol in the natal chart and more a sign when in transit? Or a symbol is isolation that is pruned into a sign when we add in other horoscope elements, such as aspects and house?

And where are the boundaries between sign and symbol, anyway? Are they a continuum, not a dichotomy? Do we just get lucky when a metaphor is literalized? Is the fuzziness of modern astrological language due to the combination of massive choice and metaphorical thinking?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions — a sure sign, I suppose, that I need more reading.